2nd NaNoWriMo within a year?!

... Naaah, not exactly.

So, for those of you unaware, I participated in JanNoWriMo. This was not an official event, but something that me and other people did on Facebook, just for fun. You set a goal for yourself and throughout the month we were going to try to achieve that. 

Though the month is still not over, I would like to share my results, since Saturday is story-time!

My goal for the month of January was to do the 2nd draft of my current novel.

So I had things going great for me at the start of the month. Had the first 10k down within the first week, which is slower than what I managed in November, but still good. And from there things moved on in a steady pace. However... When I hit about 25k I slowed down. I was scared that I had deleted too much in my revising process and that my novel would end up being less than 50k words long. So I did not feel motivated to write at all.

I felt hopeless and actually had a minor depression. Didn't wanna do anything at all. And having trouble in my Social Science class only made things worse. And I didn't have anyone to turn to. I don't know about you all, but I am not a very touchy-feely person, and I hate sharing how I feel with others. When I have a problem, I like that problem to stay with me. Because of this I felt alone.

Writing is not as easy as some people may think. It takes dedication. And a heck of a lot of it. When you have school, writing classes, a social life and free time writing interferring with each other... things get kind of crazy. 

So for a while I couldn't even rewrite a whole chapter in a day, which was really slow progress for me. However, then something amazing happened to me. I went online and found a website where I found out that some of my favorite authors' books weren't even that long in wordcount terms. If we take Cathy Hopkins as an example; Her series "Mates, dates and..." has 12 books. Some of those books aren't even over 30k words. 

This brought back my desire to write. I thought to myself "If she could get published with that wordcount, so can I. And I'm not even done yet!"

That ended up working out for me, and by now I have a little over 52k on my 2nd draft. What does this mean? Well it means that I basically did my 2nd NaNoWriMo within a year. My 2nd draft is still not done, and I think it will be around 60-80k words... maybe 75k. Something like that. 

Now this wasn't as dificult to achieve as the goal in November, since I already had everything written down this time around and all I really had to do was type it into the computer. But that process was way more time consuming than I expected when I set the goal for myself.

I can't wait for this draft to be done. Then all I need to do is read it through, send it off to beta-readers, get their feedback, imply their feedback and then send it off. I don't even care if I get rejected. All I care is to know that I have what it takes to put this much work in one project. And I am proud of myself for that.

Keep Calm and Write on.

- Nanna

The end? Of course not...

Week one of NaNoWriMo is officially over. If you have survived; Congratulaiton! You are one of the lucky few with your sanity intact...or not. 

NaNoWriMo day #7 - wordgoal: 11667 -

So this was actually one of my lowest wordcounts so far doing NaNo. I only wrote a little over 3k words, but for some reason I just did not care that much. My totalt wordcount for November 7th was 48.800 words. This meant that I knew, I would be able to finish on November 8th! I was so excited that I put the words into a Word-document to see, how many pages I had written. 107 pages. It really got me pumped to write even more on the 8th. But The main reason why I think I did not care about my wordcount for the day was; I really love my story. Everything I just love. I love to write it, and if I have to be honest, it is the kind of story I would love to read.

NaNoWriMo day #8 - wordgoal: 13333 - 

So I had 1½ hours of free time doing school, so I decided to write. And you guessed it. I hit 50k! On November 8th I won NaNoWriMo 2013! I wrote 50k in one week, which at the beginning of the month was my unrealistic goal. I ended up writing about 3k more words that day which left me with a wordcount of 53.846 words. However, even though I have won NaNoWriMo, I am not even half way done with my novel. Last year I only aimed to write 50k, but this year I want to actually finish a novel. I want the first draft to be 100 % complete by November 30th. Now I am positive it is going to happen, but I am not going to be writing another 50k this coming week. With NaNo and school, it just got so stressful. So I am from now on just going to write as much as I can manage every day. I will no longer let it interfere with my school work. And maybe I will be able to get some sleep.

NaNoWriMo day #9 - wordgoal: 15000 -

So now we have come to today; I wrote from when I woke till now, and I managed to cross the 60k mark. Now I did have 20 minutes breaks between each of my 1k words, and I could have easily written 10k today, but I am happy with my 8.275 words. This brought my total to 62.118 words, which in a Word-document is the same as 136 pages.

Here is my graf:

Please notice all the green bars. They make me feel good about myself. Never in a million years did I imagine myself writing 50k in one week. Next year; 50k weekend, and the year after that 50k on day one. Yeah...right. I would be dead.

No matter how far above or behind of the wordgoal you are, I believe that you can make it to that 50k finish line! Hell, if I can, ANYone can. Trust me. Writing takes dedication, and if you are willing to put enough of it into your work, you will have a novel by the 30th.

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna.